¢ Workshops. From one-day to one-year agreements, and everything in between.

¢ Executive mentoring.

¢ Online/virtual training.

¢ Books. She acknowledges, though, that her books are really more
of a “business card” than a profit center, although they do come in
handy to beef up a speaking engagement fee!

You see innovation . The businesses in this room—particularly
the ones that come back year after year—may be big, but they are
not slow.

They’re mostly creative, operationally optimized, and eager to
discover and adopt new ideas and technologies. They’re also super
responsive to their clients’ needs.

Bill Cates, CSP, CPAE, is a great example. Ever since he introduced online, video-based training and reinforcement programs, his
back-end revenues are usually equal to, if not more than, his original
speaking fee.

As he stated on Facebook: “I’m headed into my 18th year of licensing my video-based content to large corporations. It’s like printing
money legally! Sometimes the renewal is simply changing the date
of the agreement from one year to the next. I don’t understand why
more of our members don’t make their IP available in this way.”

He then proceeded to agree to deliver a training on how to license
IP profitably to the rest of the members of the MDSG.

You’ll see cross-pollination. Masterminds, meetings, brainstorming sessions, think tanks, accountability groups. Whatever
name they go by, the best of the best are collaborating, sharing best
practices, and supporting each other.

TO COMP OR NOT?

One speaker’s “waste of time” becomes another
speaker’s “big break” when your end goal is to
build back-end revenue.

Every single person I interviewed forthis article told me there are situations thatabsolutely warrant strategically lowering orwaiving their fee. As one of them put it: “I don’tsee it as speaking for free, because I know thatin a room full of ideal clients, I’m looking at amultiple six-figure payday.”Bill Cates, CSP, CPAE, says waiving his feeworked out really well for him recently whenhe met a man from a very large and well-knownfinancial institution and asked him if he couldjust “add to the agenda.” Bill delivered likea boss (my words, not his), and two or threeweeks later got the call: “We have a budget, andwe’d like to bring you in …” Now, it’s a half-million-dollar project over three years.

The key, according to Marquesa Pettway,
CSP, is to stop thinking of these engagements
as “marketing.” “If you go in thinking that,”
she says, “you’re not going to monetize them
properly. You have to know what you’re selling
and how you’re going to make that invitation.”
She says many speakers aren’t comfortable with
it because they don’t have the infrastructure in
place to leverage it.

That’s pretty much what Jon Schallert
said, too. For the right audience, he’ll not only
waive his fee, he’ll pay to play! Every year he
pays his own way to attend a conference full
of downtown development directors from
all over the country, and deliver a 75-minute
presentation. This fills his pipeline for the
whole year!

Stacey Hanke, CSP, will at times waive her
fee, but the audience must be the right industry,
and full of people who can hire her and/or
purchase books, or introduce her strategically.
“I’m making sure to get benefits and track any
momentum we get from the endeavor.”